Suddenly, the door to the salon burst open. Sydney checked the clock on the wall.
“I know, I know,” Violet said as she hurried in, an adorable moon-faced one-year-old boy on her hip. She had a plastic thrift-store bag over her shoulder that Sydney knew didn’t have enough diapers in it to get through the day. “I’m late. Sorry.”
Sydney did a few quick twists with her hair and secured the twists with clips so that she could go take the baby from Violet.
“No one would baby-sit him,” Violet said when Sydney took him in her arms and snuffled his dark hair, which made him laugh. “My neighbor across the street, who usually takes him, went to Dollywood this weekend. I had to bring him.”
“It’s okay,” Sydney said, even though it wasn’t. But Violet knew how much Sydney loved baby Charlie. She knew she had something Sydney wanted. Young girls always know. They know older women look at them and see what they’ve left behind and can’t get back. It’s a truth everyone knows but no one acknowledges: There’s nothing more powerful than an eighteen-year-old girl.
Violet had dropped out of school when her mother, a Turnbull—a family known for their wild ways and unparalleled ability to have children at the drop of a hat—left town with her latest boyfriend. Violet partied all the time, did some drugs, and soon got pregnant. If she knew who the father was, she never said. Charlie looked every bit like his mother with his dark hair, widow’s peak, and coffee bean–colored eyes.
Sydney had met Violet a few months ago when Sydney had taken her lunch break and grabbed some orange juice and yogurt at Fred’s market, intending to sit on the green and eat. It had been prom season and her arms had ached from creating all those updos.
Sitting cross-legged on the green in her tie-dye harem pants and black racer-back tee, she’d put the OJ and yogurt on the ground between her legs, then closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun, soaking it in.
A few moments later, she’d felt something tug at her leg, and looked down to see a dark-haired baby in an unsnapped onesie trying to crawl into her lap. She’d remained perfectly still, the way you do when you realize you have a bee on you, waiting to see where it was going before you overreacted. She’d finally had to reach for him when he’d crawled over her knee and was about to go face-first into the ground.
She’d stood and put him on her hip as she looked around the green. There hadn’t been a lot of people around that day, but she did see a teenager with long, stringy hair on a bench near Horace J. Orion’s half-buried bust, the one college students would pass and joke, “Horace may be dead, but he’s not buried.”
“Excuse me,” Sydney had called to the skinny girl in oversized sunglasses. “Is he yours?”
The girl hadn’t moved.
“Excuse me?” Sydney had called, louder this time.
The girl had startled awake and turned her head to Sydney.
“Is he yours?”
She’d nodded and yawned, but made no move to get up, so Sydney bent to get her OJ and yogurt, then walked over to the bench. As she’d gotten closer, she realized she recognized the girl, who was just a few years older than Bay.
“You’re a Turnbull, aren’t you? Your family lives near the mobile home manufacturing plant?”
“We used to,” Violet had said, not taking the baby from Sydney when she sat down beside her. “My mom left. I had to move out.”
Sydney had discovered that Violet now shared a trailer with a woman and her old common-law husband, who were on disability and had plenty of prescription pills to give to those in need, for a price. Violet had been looking for a job, but said no one would hire her. “My mom was right,” Violet had said when Sydney had given her the OJ and fed the yogurt to the baby. “When she left, she said there’s nothing good here.”
Sydney’s old receptionist, Amber, had just gotten married and had immediately gotten pregnant (of course) and was moving to Fayetteville, where her husband was stationed at Fort Bragg. So Sydney had offered Violet the job. She’d recognized something in Violet, something Sydney had felt at the same age. Violet wanted to leave. She almost vibrated with it. She looked at life outside of Bascom as the promised land. She thought everything wrong with her life was the fault of this place, therefore happiness would surely be hers if only she could escape.
Sydney had left at eighteen, feeling the same way. She’d wanted so badly to escape the burden of her family’s name and reputation. Out there in that big wide open was where she’d met Bay’s biological father, and escape had taken on an entirely new meaning. It had taken her a long time to realize that a prison sometimes isn’t a prison at all. Sometimes it’s simply a door you assume is locked because you’ve never tried to open it.
The job was like throwing Violet a lifeline. Violet needed something to tether herself here. Without this job, it would only be a matter of time before Violet left and took Charlie with her.
Violet dropped the plastic diaper bag as soon as Sydney had taken Charlie, and made a beeline for the coffeemaker and cookies. “Can you watch him while I do my hair?” Violet asked, spitting crumbs. “I didn’t have time before I left.”
“Use my station. The curling iron is already hot.”
“Thanks.”
People wondered why Sydney put up with Violet.
Sydney held the baby in the air above her and looked up into his sweet round face while he smiled and curled his toes and stuck his fist in his mouth.
It was because of this.